by Marc Secchia
Shapeshifter. They tossed it around for a few minutes with mounting excitement, before Hualiama briefed them on her new status in Azziala’s realm. Naturally, His Insightful Highness had a few things to share on this score too.
He said, “Fantastic news, Lia. You’ll soon engineer a solution to the bloodletting problem. Obviously, the Enchanters couldn’t give a brass dral for any Dragon’s health. They’re after the hides anyway. We’ll help you figure out how to keep our Dragons alive, meantime we turn your particular skills on this Command-hold magic. I fancy fomenting a little mutiny …”
Sapphurion rested his huge blue paw on the Prince’s shoulders. “That’s the spirit, youngling.”
Oh aye, they would discover in a week or so the secret which had eluded a hundred generations of Lost Islands Dragons? Lia fumed inwardly. What further encouragement did Elki need? Yet he had just whisked the proverbial purple dragonet out of the bag, with an insight which arguably held the key to her entire existence and future. Chewing rotten tinker bananas, Lia? Rather than fussing about her brother earning rightful acclaim for his contributions, perhaps it was time to dust off that girl who loved engineering solutions … if she didn’t tinker Grandion’s head off his shoulders first!
“We’ll need to count and survey the Dragon populations of Azziala’s fortresses,” she said. “I’ll discuss their needs with the Councillors and Dragonship Engineering. Then, we’ll work out a schedule and a methodology to ensure the weaker or sicker Dragons are able to return to good health. Sapphurion, do you know how quickly Dragons regenerate their blood supply?”
“No, Dragonfriend. But we will learn. I’ll search out capable Dragons to be your right paws in each of the Dragon-Hater fortresses.”
“Good. I’ll need research teams, too. Can you rustle up a few scholarly Dragons?”
Sapphurion assented, while Grandion put in, “Siiyumiel taught me a range of techniques which may prove useful.”
Really? When, Grandion? Lia asked.
While you slept, Siiyumiel expounded much Dragon lore to my attentive ears.
Full of surprises, aren’t you, my Tourmaline?
Grandion rumbled contentedly.
Unaware of this exchange, Saori warned meantime, “Within minutes, Azziala will know what we’ve discussed here.”
Lia said, “Aye. She knows the Dragons will try to escape. In fact, she’s expecting it and sees it as another test–don’t you, mother?” Her bold sally produced no reply.
“What was that?” said Mizuki.
“A tremor? I felt it, too,” said Grandion. “Different to volcanic activity.”
“It’s the Land Dragons.” That stunned her companions! Lia said, “I mean, this entire Island is a Dragon.”
All three Dragons ruffled their wings in shock, but it was Grandion who growled, “Lia, are you certain you’ve returned in your right mind?” When she fixed her most mysterious smile–indeed, her most draconic smile–upon him, it produced a second, more agitated ruffle. “Returned from where, is the question! What trouble have you caused this time, o Dragon-Shaker?”
His clever play on words changed the meaning of the word ‘Dragonfriend’ into a positive yet surprising influence, one that shook a Dragon for good.
“I woke the Island,” she said diffidently. “And, I returned with these.”
Grandion frowned as she produced the dragonet egg from her pocket, then hissed between his fangs as she drew the scale-necklace from beneath her clothes. “You disobeyed my orders, Lia! You went … exploring.”
“Orders?” Sapphurion queried. “Is that the nature of your relationship, shell-son?”
“I misspoke. Mis-thought, too, it appears,” snarled the Tourmaline. “I sought to protect the Dragonfriend; she cared not for my sheltering wing and my forethought for a hatchling’s needs and abilities.”
She had hurt him! Hualiama stood abruptly; Grandion recoiled, but the small chamber gave him no space to retreat further. Nevertheless, he would not bow the proud arch of his neck to approach or nuzzle her, as he ordinarily might have.
Standing on her tiptoes, Lia could reach his chin at her fullest stretch. Stroking the tough scales that lined the point of his jaw, she said, “You were right about the danger, Grandion, although it was not as we had imagined. The freezing weather of these Isles is the breath of mighty beasts, drawn from a place of terrible cold beneath the Cloudlands. May I share my thought-memories with you? And will you accept my regret–”
“Why? Why do you make this so difficult, Dragonfriend?”
She sighed.
The Tourmaline’s stiffness resembled a petrified tree. “I understand the need for connection with your shell-mother. I also see one may command the wind, yet it blows as it wishes.”
“Grandion, I am not ungovernable. I know I treasure silly things. This scale means the world to me. I picked up the egg because I felt drawn to it. You see, I oftentimes don’t even understand these consuming passions–oh?”
He did not bend, but instead, offered his paw, palm upraised. Ceremoniously, he said, “Will my Dragon Rider ascend?”
“Dragon?”
Instead of answering her query, he lifted her until they could see eye-to-eye. What she saw there, stung and thrilled her in equal measure. Understanding. Respect. More than a touch of frustration. If fire could ever claim gentleness, that was the tenor of how he burned for her. Much was clouded, as though he harboured an Island’s weight of doubts–rightly so. Yet as he searched her eyes, perhaps seeking the flame within, she realised that the Dragon was emoting his reiteration of the oath-promises, so freely and innocently given years before, which had shaped both of their lives ever since, and the Island-World around them.
Then, he said, I trust thee, Hualiama.
I honour thee, Grandion. Not the oaths. Him. Giving her Dragon the chance to take that first backward step, with integrity.
Thou, he whispered. She winced. He must release her and grieve, but he refused.
Unwillingly, helplessly, she replied, Thou.
* * * *
When a Dragon wished to ponder a scientific problem or a thorny philosophical issue, it was common practice to take to the heights, and from a commanding position to gaze over the Island-World, seeking to draw such inspiration from natural harmony and beauty as would raise the fire-soul to a state similar to the Human concepts of meditation or holy contemplation. Dragon lore called this practice far-seeing. Most especially, Dragons who undertook the sacred fire-quest, often wandering for seasons and even years, would employ far-seeing in an attempt to discern the flight and purpose of their lives. Similarly Master Jo’el, the monk and her mentor, had often stressed the need to draw aside and ground the soul amidst the great mysteries of a grain of sand, an ant, or the vastness of the Universe beyond the Island-World and its five moons.
Thus, when she scaled an unknown peak above the caldera of her Island home in her dream, Hualiama expected to meet her Dragoness-self in that dream-chamber amidst the stars. Dragonsoul was her muse, her counterpart, her source of surprises aplenty.
She did not expect to meet Fra’anior.
Turning from an extended contemplation of the eastern horizon, she saw him there, coiled amidst the Islands, the enormity of his being filling the eighteen league-wide caldera as though it were built to serve as his roost, and the gaps between the rim-Islands had been fashioned to provide comfortable hollows in which to rest his heads. Five heads slumbered, but two were awake, towering above her with their characteristic mantling of storm-clouds, as though the Ancient Dragon wore for his robe the might of Nature herself. Fra’anior was called the Great Onyx, the gleam of gemstone black his armour. Each scale was as broad as the beam of a Dragonship, and his presence was so fearsomely dark and brooding and awesome, that it seemed there should be no need for night to shroud this corner of the Island-World. Matchless in power, cried the ballads, the fearsome enslaver of Humankind. Where he moved, all must tremble.
Hualiama inclined her hea
d respectfully, did not bend the knee. Were this her shell-father, by some miracle, such a genuflection would be strange and inappropriate.
Four great eyes burned upon her, effortlessly defining the ineffable majesty of the Dragonkind. Lia’s stomach churned. Dragon fear. Rightly so.
At last, in a voice like thundering waters, he announced, “I sense the spirit of one I know, but not the bodily form. I am not accustomed to being deceived. Tell me, art thou Hualiama?”
A startling echo of Grandion’s response. Furthermore, the breeze blew a blue strand of hair across her eyes. Her gut performed an unhappy dance. She was Dragon-girl? He was not the only one who was confused. And so, beginning with a desperate quaver in her voice but growing in confidence, Lia declared her name and lineage, and showed Fra’anior the shell she wore about her neck.
“Shapeshifter?” he growled at last. “Equally a servant of Dragon and Human natures? This was never the plan for the paramount power of the Lesser Dragonkind.”
“Did Istariela do wrong, o great Fra’anior?” Lia inquired.
“I should have apprehended this cunning design of the Star Dragoness earlier,” said the Onyx Dragon. “This she concealed even from mine seventh sense, such was the traitoress Istariela’s power over the Balance. The purity of a Dragon’s soul-fire was never meant to be adulterated. Even Dramagon dared not cross to an Island of such perversity, though he many times prowled about its shores. Tell me, little one, is this Amaryllion’s paw at work? Is he a traitor, too?”
How hateful his language! Dismay ate at her gut as if she had been forced to swallow acid. Was she, a creature of unknowable perversity, to be rejected by another parent? Six parents was a wealth by any measure. Two adoptive, one dead, one fled, one as evil a woman who had ever lived, one existing beyond the Island-World but apparently, she disgusted him.
All that Hualiama touched, crumbled into dust and blew into the Cloudlands.
Yet his mood seemed fickle, sliding from a visible boiling of the storm about his heads one instant, to open curiosity the next. He said, “Tell me of Hualiama’s doings, little hatchling. Why dost thou carry an egg? Explain this bequest of Amaryllion’s, which was just now foremost in thine mind?”
She sensed coercion present, but either Fra’anior withheld or his power was so subtle, she could not detect its workings upon her mind, for Lia slowly began to converse with him, and soon found herself speaking with unaccustomed freedom and boldness. Let a shell-father know his shell-daughter. Please, let him see her worth, let him value and not despise the unforeseen fruit of his body.
So she spoke of that fleeting sense of connection with the dragonet’s cold, cold egg, and all she had shared with Grandion, Mizuki, Sapphurion, Elki and Saori of her healing at Siiyumiel’s paw. She described her five-day-old campaign to revive all of the Dragons, of her recalculation of the bloodletting schedule and her experiments with Dragon nutrition to try to stem the steady flow of deaths related to their mistreatment at the hand of Azziala’s Dragon-Haters. Fra’anior hissed when she described how some of the Dragons she had despatched to hunt to provide a more varied diet had attempted to escape, only to perish in the Cloudlands. She digressed into describing the fledgling attempts by Elki and Saori to develop a Dragon Rider lore and code of conduct, and how Fumiko’s husband, the blacksmith Tadao, sought to revive the ancient art of forging weaponry and Dragon battle-armour in Dragon fires. The great, flaming eyes watching her blinked in concert when Hualiama granted Fra’anior a taste of the Dragon-Rider oath-magic, which she believed was Amaryllion’s true gift breathed into her flesh.
When questioned, she related her eggling-dreams of Istariela and the prophecy of the Child of the Dragon. This turned his rumbling down a notch, mellowing the mighty Onyx’s belly-fires into the purring of the largest rajal in existence, a sound that rose and fell in conjunction with the soughing of her soul. Yet when she shared the secret of how the eggling-spirit had travelled across the Island-World in search of a ruined, stillborn Human babe, she felt the resultant quivering of his great body through her bare feet, and saw the Island-sized heads shaking in consternation.
“This is a newfound magic and most perilous indeed,” said the Ancient Dragon. “The ways of magic are elusive and fresh, even as the song of life endlessly renews, adapts and struggles with its internal imperative to master its environment and challenges. One is ever the student, never magic’s absolute master. Learn this lesson well, little one.”
“I hear you, Great One.”
The great eyes regarded her with fierce, humbling pride. “A Dragon’s heritage is not merely physical or generational, as with Human procreation. There is also spiritual heritage, by which we believe certain fire-spirits can be regenerated or even re-embodied in the draconic young, passing a magical or gifted heritage between unrelated Dragons. Yet this is not entirely what Istariela has achieved … I don’t think.” The admission of self-doubt caused huge fires to pour out of his nostrils, but he directed the conflagration away from her frail Human body. Nonetheless, the blasting heat sucked Lia’s lungs dry. “This must remain between us–our secret, Blue-star.”
“How greatly mine hearts yearn to truly know thee, to be with thee, and to clasp thine beauty in mine paw. Yet the price would be prohibitive. And there are battles here, battles to be fought which are beyond thine ken and relate to the Ancient Dragon-Spirits–for this reason, I cannot always be with thee. But I will be with thee in spirit, and I foresee … a knowing grips my bones …”
The wash of his indrawn breath slammed her to her knees.
MOTHER TO MYRIAD, THOU SHALT BE!
From her knees, his roar knocked her flat on her back in an ungainly tangle. She groaned, Whaaa … For white-fires billowed through her being, the visionary power briefly imperious, then gone. She wondered if Fra’anior spoke a prophecy, or spoke the prophetic into being, such was his power.
Peace, little one, he said apologetically. This power of prophetic utterance grips me most sorely. These are words which just now came to me through mine seventh-sense contemplation of thy existence. Thou shalt be mother to myriad, for I see a mighty host gathered before my foresight, shining and beautiful, fey and proud, warring and living and loving and dying as ever did the Humankind and the Lesser Dragons, the fruit of mine labours.
He broke off abruptly, as if biting the words short.
In the sudden absence of his words, her shaking was visceral, her tears, a Cloudlands-bound waterfall. I’m not so much the motherly sort, Great One, she stammered.
The course of life waits upon its right seasons, he replied.
All she knew was that war and destruction would precede any hoped-for future, even that prophesied by an Ancient Dragon. His febrile gaze acknowledged this truth.
Fra’anior said, Yet, this Word must be accompanied by a great caution. I sense a taint within thee, the spirit-life of my old foe, Dramagon. Not inborn, but resident. I must warn thee never to have hatchlings until that taint is expurgated from your being, Hualiama. It would … I fear the worst. I will watch, and help, and meditate upon how to deny the ruzal any further purchase on thy life, for it is a magic most foul and perverse.
If good and evil exist in eternal Balance, o Fra’anior, can this purpose ever be accomplished?
His laughter was thunder. It was delight. It caused the Islands to dance upon their foundations. As her dream faded, she heard him say, Thusly might thou mantle thyself in the dance of wisdom, o foundling-treasure of mine third heart.
* * * *
From the mysteries of the Universe, to death. Large-scale destruction. On the ninth and final day of the week after she willingly entered the Empress’ service, the Star Dragoness walked the halls of Dardak Tertiary, one of three fortresses on Dardak Island, with Grandion and Sapphurion. Released from the Command-hold, the Dragons had revolted. Over a hundred slain. Another two hundred were maimed beyond hope of healing, their injuries inflicted by Enchanter-prepared Dragons which, they recognised now, had been cun
ningly seeded amongst the ranks. At the first sign of rebellion, the Dragons had fallen upon each other and torn each other and their comrades apart.
No Dragon-Hater had lifted so much as a finger in defence. There was no need.
Golden blood had congealed on the walls and the bodies piled at the base of a central volcanic pipe–if volcanic it was, Hualiama thought–by groups of Dragon labourers. Here, Sapphurion paused before the huge mound of broken, bitten, torn Dragon bodies, his muzzle bowed and his eye-fires a deathly shade of orangey-black. He said, Fools! To squander all life and magic …
They disobeyed orders, Grandion said. The hides should have been flayed, and the blood collected.
Sapphurion growled, Come, Hualiama. We must deal with this.
As the Island shook beneath their paws, Sapphurion threw her a significant glance. Her network of Dragon leaders had been tracking the underground activity of tremors, and the data showed clear signs of increase across the Cluster. The Land Dragons stirred.
Together, with Grandion trailing a wing-length behind, the Dragon Elder and the hatchling winged upward to the pipe’s open exit, to where the Lost Islands Dragons waited. The leader of this group, Jyrandia, was a powerful Blue Overmind, one hundred and forty-two years old. She had been severely weakened by bloodletting, but was now slowly improving under Lia’s regimen of staggered blood collection every fourth day, supplemented by improved diet and vigorous daily exercise. Amusingly, Grandion reported that a number of the Dragonkind had taken to calling her ‘Hatchling Elder-Paws’ in private. She’d work them even harder in that case, Lia grumbled!
As they emerged into the luminous late evening, Lia imagined there must be a rare five-Moon conjunction, but this was not the case. The light was the comet, bending its blazing trail toward the heart of the Lost Islands–aimed at the Buffer Zone, Yul’xi the Red Overmind scientist had calculated, way to the West of the open-topped mountain where the Dragons had gathered in the natural amphitheatre formed by the mouth of the pipe they had ascended, comprised of an olivine and grey dacite superstrate, as recorded in the Haters’ geological knowledge-archive. Yet her eyes were for the assembled Dragonkind. They numbered perhaps four hundred, a cross-section of the different Lost Island subspecies. Her scales thrilled to an underlying tension in the air, a hint of danger that Grandion and Sapphurion clearly picked up on, because the tempo of their inner fires amplified noticeably.
